Jeffrey Alexander Martin

Is vagueness a feature of language, a feature of reality, or a feature of both? Vagueness permeates our communication, our thinking, and our reality. Each of these are interrelated areas that it will be useful to examine separately and then bring back together. The problem of what is and is not vague and how to handle that has significance ranging from everyday actions to technical philosophy and science.  Communication has a variety of purposes and therefore different types of statements and tones. Let’s take a common interaction in the imperative tone, “Go to the store and buy some milk.” This is a normal occurrence that is usually workable for most people. However, there is a level of vagueness in the terms that usually isn’t addressed, because in a given context it isn’t necessary. If the two people know each other and know the area then these potential variables have already been worked out at some point. Let’s assume that the two people don’t know each other and that they don...

Explain the counterfactual analysis of causation. Is it correct? Causality is generally thought of as one thing leading to another, e.g. x so then y so then z. This is stated as an actuality, and there are several things to note about it. One, there are limited items under consideration. Two, there is a relation between the items. Three, there is a structured concept of time. Four, it is final. Counterfactuals offer us a path for a more in-depth analysis of causation by allowing us to vary each of these items, and thus work with possibility. If x happens and then y happens, how do we know that x caused y? Even if this sequence of events repeats, we can only know that we have found a correlation (Hume). The proposition “x causes y” is true if and only if x actually causes y (Tarski). We can use the idea of a counterfactual to help us explore the issue, i.e. a proposition counter to the facts. If x were to not happen, and that means that y would therefore also not happen, then this would...

In Republic IV, how does Plato’s Socrates argue for a three-part soul? Is the argument successful? Socrates’ early ideas about using his questioning technique in the pursuit of knowledge lead to both realizations and further questions. One such problem is that people seem to have inner contradictions. If people were able to have one overriding virtue, or one principle of moral action, or one guiding concept of decision making, then there shouldn’t be a contradiction within an individual person about what is good or just, or what to do, in any given circumstance. And yet, this exists. Plato seeks to solve this problem in ‘The Republic’ by proposing a three part soul, allowing for the three parts to potentially contradict each other. This solution emerges from the phenomenological experience of the self and the observation of other humans such as expressed in discussions and debates. The three proposed parts of the soul are the reasoning part that is able to do rational thinking and the ...

A number of years ago I read 'Escape From Freedom' by Erich Fromm. The longer I think about it, the more I realize how important and fundamental the problems that Fromm lays out in that book are. "It is the thesis of this book," Fromm states in the forward, "that modern man, freed from the bonds of preindividualistic society, which simultaneously gave him security and limited him, has not gained freedom in the positive sense of the realization of his individual self; that is, the expression of his intellectual, emotional and sensuous potentialities. Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless. This isolation is unbearable and the alternatives he is confronted with are either to escape from the burden of this freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realization of positive freedom which is based upon the uniqueness and individuality of man." This is a...

Can I become a better person by being subjected to the Socratic Elenchus? Becoming a better person has been an important subject for millennia in religion, philosophy, and the modern self-help industry. Techniques range from being beaten for doing bad things, to debates, to listening to hypnotic tapes while you sleep. Elenchus, commonly referred to as Socratic dialogue, is widely known as helping in the learning process. Does this technique also lead to improvements as a person? The context that Socratic dialogue is applied in is important. For instance, you can involuntarily be subjected to questions by police in an interrogation room, or by lawyers in a courtroom. It’s unlikely that such an involuntary dialogue will lead to personal insights or revelations that will help you to improve as a person. However, there are other contexts where the opposite may be true. In an environment where the other person truly has goodwill toward you and where there are no goals other than that of tru...

Did Hume succeed in explaining how it is that we come to believe in the existence of a self of which we have no idea? David Hume’s generally perceived conception of the self is disturbing to many people, in that it is thought that he proposed that there is no self. And, this does seem to be true for part of his career, that he proposed the self as being a collection of separate and not necessarily related impressions and ideas that is only held together by imagination. However, it’s an idea that he struggled with, and we can see why when we look at how he arrived at that temporary conclusion. Hume noted that the only things that we have direct awareness of are our own mental notions of the world. But, it is only natural and true to think that these mental notions are of something external to the mind in existence. Ideas are mental conceptions that we hold purely internally, impressions have a stronger quality and are generated from perceptions of this external world and are what allow ...

Explain and assess the arguments that Berkeley used to demonstrate the existence of God. The existence or non-existence of God or gods is a topic that has generated an immense amount of debate over millennia. George Berkeley’s arguments are unique and quite different than the scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas who worked from an Aristotelian base. Berkeley takes a much different approach. His entire work seems to be building to the proof of the necessity of God. To arrange this overall argument he begins with conceptions about the nature of existence.  When we interact with something in the world we assume it to be in the world. But, the only way that we can know this is through our perception of the thing. For instance, if someone asks me if a shnuck exists, I don’t know. If they ask me if I like it, I have no idea. If they ask me what kind of shnuck I like, I have no idea. If they ask me if shnucks should or should not be eaten, I have no idea. I have never heard of such a thing ...

Explain and assess Mill’s account of conscience as the ultimate internal sanction of all morality. John Stuart Mill was an intellectual prodigy that grew in the shadow of James Mill and Jeremy Bentham. He took their ideas about Utilitarianism and made them more accessible to the public, as well as strengthening the arguments to support the philosophy by addressing difficulties and subtleties that their concepts encountered. One objection is what ultimate sanction the morality of utility rests upon. Mill points out that this is an inquiry that is applicable to all accounts of morality. The conclusions that Mill draws from the Utilitarianism maxim of the greatest happiness for the greatest number are things people usually agree with, such as to not steal even when you can get away with it, but he points out that people both do not know what the foundation of such moral imperatives is, nor are they often open to the idea put forth by utility, but they are unsure as to why. The layperson o...

Explain and assess Socrates’ claim in Plato’s Republic that justice is a kind of social harmony. Justice and morality have been discussed, debated, and contemplated by the greatest philosophers in history. Three generations of Greek thinkers are often considered the foundation of philosophical thinking: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Each confronted the problem of explaining, justifying, and understanding justice. I will examine the fount of much of the debate around this topic over the past couple thousand years by seeking to understand Socrates' account of justice as social harmony. In Plato's work "The Republic" Socrates begins the discussion with others in his normal way, a dialogue where he asks questions seeking to understand what people mean by what they say. In that way he draws out clearer definitions, and often finds contradictions and other difficulties in the thinker's process leading to their conclusions. This can be frustrating not only for the peop...

'According to Hume, reason alone does not move us to act, though our moral opinions do, and he rightly infers from this that reason cannot be the source of our moral opinions.' Discuss. Hume rightly points out that the human capacity for reason is a powerful faculty. We can compare and contrast ideas from things that are similar, to things that do not seem so at first glance. The term relational frame theory wouldn't come about in psychology until hundreds of years after Hume, but it points out the power of this human ability. For instance, how are a pig and a chair related? Most people's first reaction is that they aren't, but then if they think about it for two seconds they come up with something. Such as, both of them have four legs. As the mind starts to turn the possibilities become immense and you begin to realize that the chair manufacturer probably eats pork, the pork company's accountant sits in a chair, a wooden chair had a life as a tree that ended an...

'Critically discuss the connection that Kant makes between morality and freedom.' Kant's views on morality and freedom are complex and difficult to understand. One of the primary distinctions that he makes in morality is between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives. A hypothetical imperative has an end connected with a causal means. Essentially it's an if/then statement. For instance, if you want to get stronger then exercise. A categorical imperative is a moral law with no end. For instance, exercise. Given such a moral command you may ask, "Why?" Kant says that there is no answer to that. All rational beings in the universe have universal intuitions about a grand moral law. True freedom is making decisions according to this moral law. If you choose to go against this law then it's neither moral nor is it a free decision. This law is made by rational moral agents freely choosing moral actions that write the law that you must intuitively fo...

Is there any more to the concept of truth than what is captured by Tarski’s TSchema: ‘s’ is true if and only if p, where ‘“s’” is a name of the sentence in the object language that is translated by ‘p’ in the metalanguage? The concept of truth can appear to be simple at first glance. The normal idea of truth is that which actually exists as it does in reality. That what is said is also the way things are. This intuitive idea of truth is called correspondence, in that the proposition corresponds with actual reality. One of the best versions of this idea is the T-schema from Alfred Tarski. I'll offer a few objections to this theory of truth, along with responses. An often used way to express the T-schema is: "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white. The same principle can be written as: "s" is true iff p. The simple structure of this formulation is deceptively complex in addressing the issue of truth. The most noticeable thing about the T-schema is tha...

Can John admire Sherlock Holmes, even though Sherlock Holmes does not exist? To ask the question "Can John admire Sherlock Holmes, even though Sherlock Holmes does not exist?" is to ask a question that requires answers at two interrelated levels. One is the nature and definition of "exist", the other is interaction and reaction to different types of existents. Starting from the position of everyday experience it's easy to see that people do have emotional reactions to fictional characters. All people do this by reading or listening to stories, watching movies, playing video games, seeing plays, etc. We therefore know that there is both a phenomenological experience and reaction to fictional characters. The deeper question pertains to the nature of an object that does not "exist". If we ask "Does Sherlock Holmes exist?" we get two answers, both yes and no. If we want to obtain the birth record or the government ID of Sherlock Holmes we will no...